Category: Premature Ovarian Failure

When menopause strikes in your 30s

~ femmephysicist ~ 1 Comment

It’s funny: I’ve discussed everything from infertility grief to the intimate details of my uterine lining on this blog, and yet today’s topic — menopause — somehow feels like an even more taboo thing to discuss. Maybe it’s because — unlike an infertility journey — there’s no hope of a baby at the end.* And yet, in my case at least, the two journeys are inextricably connected.

Some readers may recall that the reason we used donor eggs to conceive our Miracle Baby (MB) was my premature ovarian failure (POF) diagnosis, which is sort of (but not exactly) like premature menopause. Effectively, this means that your ovaries stop releasing eggs, and your estrogen and progesterone levels plummet. In fact, when I was first diagnosed five years ago, I remember the gynecologist telling me that my hormone levels were that of a woman ‘twenty years older’, and that she was ‘shocked’ to see my results (I always did pride myself on making a strong impression…)

What you may not know is that infertility is only one side effect of POF. However, there are a number of other side effects, including ‘classical’ menopause symptoms like hot flashes, trouble sleeping, weight gain, and brain fog, but also more serious complications like increased risk of depression/anxiety, osteoporosis, heart disease, and neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer’s. Basically, your body is no longer making enough estrogen, and when this happens so unexpectedly early in life, this can have far-reaching consequences beyond just a lack of working ovaries. (Isn’t being a female just such a joy sometimes!)

These possible side effects of POF have been in the back of my mind since I was first diagnosed, but we were (understandably) more focused on addressing the whole having-children aspect. Once we managed that, I was under the impression that the fact that I’m still breastfeeding would somehow delay the onset of symptoms. However, recently I had the realization that I’m actually experiencing quite a few potentially related symptoms (including anxiety, hot flashes, and trouble sleeping), and from my subsequent googling, I learned that it is indeed possible to experience POF-related symptoms even while still breastfeeding.

With this all in mind, I scheduled a visit to the gynecologist a couple months ago. I specifically wanted to discuss 1) my current POF symptoms, 2) how concerned I should be about the more serious long-term consequences, and 3) whether I could start on hormone replacement therapy, particularly since I’m still breastfeeding, but also with an eye on possibly trying another embryo transfer in the not-so-distant future (more on that in a later post).

A retracted diagnosis

I’d somehow forgotten that the gynecologist was in the same department as our first IVF clinic, which probably should have raised some alarm bells. Instead, I sat in the waiting room for my turn, still convinced it’d be a quick and easy appointment.

It started badly right off the bat when the gynecologist who was seeing me didn’t seem to have any prior knowledge of my medical history despite being the same department that diagnosed me with POF already five years ago. Instead, the first thing she said was that they couldn’t necessarily diagnose me as having POF since I was still having occasional periods, and that hormone therapy was reserved for women who actually had POF and thus really needed it…

I sat there, dumbfounded. What exactly would they call my condition, then? Did they not have my old hormone levels in front of them?

I clarified my medical history, but then she decided to turn the conversation to the fact that I don’t use birth control. She warned me that I ‘still had a 5% chance’ of getting pregnant naturally as if I wouldn’t be THRILLED if that actually occurred. Now I was starting to get annoyed. I knew the statistic she was quoting was an average for *all* cases of POF, but I also had copious evidence that my case was more advanced (meaning an even lower chance). I was beginning to wish I’d brought my husband along for moral support.

Then she did an ultrasound (not seeming to understand it was approximately my 15-millionth) and was surprised when she couldn’t find my ovaries due to a lack of any follicles. (Was I surprised? Of course not.) This was about the point that I started crying, which she seemed to think was because this was all fresh news to me. I kid you not.

In reality, I was crying out of frustration. I had hormone issues severe enough to unequivocably fail out of own-egg (OE)IVF — and which were now causing a host of other symptoms — but which were apparently not ‘severe enough’ to warrant hormone therapy or even a definitive diagnosis? More importantly, by questioning my diagnosis, she had managed to invalidate in 5 minutes everything I went through the last ~8 years, which was really, REALLY hard.

Vindicated

Flash forward to two weeks later, when the gynecologist called for our follow-up telephone appointment. She sounded somber. My ears immediately perked up.

”I have the results of your recent bloodwork”, she said apologetically. She had the tone of someone attempting to delicately deliver bad news. “Unfortunately, it seems that your hormone levels are not consistent with a woman who is in menopause. They’re actually that of a woman who has already completed menopause.” She sounded somewhat in disbelief. “Your FSH is through the roof and your AMH is undetectable.” That’s right — I took her POF numbers and knocked them out of the park. She clearly expected me to be surprised. I was not.**

She said my POF was “unmistakable” and that I should start on hormone replacement therapy right away. I felt vindicated! She then referred me to an endocrinologist for a bone density scan to assess whether I already had significant bone density loss. (At that point, I still felt vindicated, though somewhat less triumphant than before…)

The good news is that the hormone replacement therapy she prescribed is safe to take while breastfeeding, and I can simply stop whenever we want to try another embryo transfer. The better news is that I’ve already noticed a significant decrease in my anxiety and hot flashes. (The not-as-good news is that the medication itself has some unpleasant side effects, but more on that in a later post.)

So in the end, I was right: I should be on hormone replacement therapy. Given all of the potential side effects of POF, I still can’t believe that some doctor along the line didn’t suggest this treatment for me earlier, but at least I’ve stumbled my way there now. And if there’s any lesson in all of this for those in similar shoes, it’s to always advocate for yourself.

xx

* Or maybe it’s because menopause is just so unpleasant. When you type ‘Why is menopause…’ into google, the first three suggestions are ‘Why is menopause so difficult?’, ‘Why is menopause bad?’, and (my personal favorite) ‘Why is menopause making me fat?’

** I’ve always been an overachiever, so I guess my POF is no different.

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Why we’re open about using donor eggs

~ femmephysicist ~ 2 Comments

Recently, I posted on Instagram about how I had explained egg donation to my new osteopath. (That particular post was about the correct terminology when discussing third-party reproduction, but that’s a topic for another day.)

My post apparently hit a nerve with one woman, who commented that she discovered as a pre-teen that her parents had used a sperm donor. She was clearly in a lot of pain still, saying that she wished she had never found out, and that she wished others didn’t know that about her, as she didn’t think it was anybody else’s business.

Obviously we want only the best for the baby we fought so hard to have, and I appreciated her point of view, so I wrote a long response acknowledging her pain and explaining our carefully considered reasons for our openness. However, when I went to post it, I discovered that she had deleted her comment. I still don’t know what changed her mind about posting, but I’ve been meaning to write a blog post on this topic anyway. So here I will explain our reasons for being open with our daughter, our friends/family, and the wider community, with the acknowledgement that every situation is different.

Should we tell our child?

When I was first researching egg donation, my googling quickly led me to articles on whether or not to tell any child conceived this way, as that’s obviously the first concern for most people.

What I learned was that if a person discovers at some point that their origin story is not what they thought (like my commenter), this sudden realization can indeed be quite traumatic. The discovery may be on purpose, such as if the parents have chosen some set time to reveal the information, but it could also be on accident, such as from a discrepancy in their medical history, from a relative letting it slip, or from the genetic testing (e.g. Ancestry.com) that’s becoming increasingly popular. In order to best avoid any (intentional or unintentional) traumatic revelation, the experts therefore recommend ‘early telling’, where you tell your child from a very young age (using, for example, the wonderful children’s book Happy Together: An egg donation story). This helps ensure that your child doesn’t have a specific moment in their life when their whole identity suddenly changed.

Should we tell our family/friends?

Once you’ve decided to tell your child from a very young age, you can’t guarantee that the information will stay private. We’re talking about little kids, after all (like my friend’s 5-year old, who recently emerged triumphantly from the bathroom announcing “My dad went POOP!”) But should you actively tell your family and friends?

In our case, our egg donor (Marie) is a close friend from my childhood, and her husband is my grad school roommate. Our families are friends, and many of our close friends are mutual. Partly due to the logistics of getting she and her husband to Europe for the donor screening — and then again (+2 young kids) for the several-week-long egg retrieval process — we were open with our families and friends from the beginning. In a true act of support, Marie’s mother even generously paid for their flights.

Even if logistics weren’t a factor, we were excited to tell our families and friends because of the beautiful gift that Marie was giving us. We didn’t even know if it would work at that point, but Marie’s offer had made us feel loved and supported — the importance of which cannot be overstated after a lonely four-and-a-half year battle with infertility. Our family and friends rallied around us all, waiting with bated breath to see if it would work. And now that it has worked, our daughter will get to meet the nice lady, “Aunt Marie”, who helped mommy and daddy have her (and who has already mailed her a Christmas present for this year!)

Should we tell other people?

I read somewhere that 10% of IVF pregnancies in the US use egg donation, which is non-negligible. Yet when we first started considering this path, I’d never heard of anyone who had done it. Marie told me later that before I mentioned needing donated eggs (not hers, but generally), she didn’t even know it existed.*

It was a scary new path to embark on, and one of the things that helped my husband and I decide to pursue it was finding other women who had children through egg donation. Seeing the relationships they had with their children — and how their children (some of them now adults) were thriving — gave me hope, and it made me want to give back in the same way by sharing our story with a wider community. In the words of a friend of mine, I wanted to help those who came after us by making the path a little less scary.**

With that said, it’s not like there’s a banner flying over our house saying “Come see the donor egg baby!” I would love to show my face on here, as well as that of our baby (because guys, she’s gorgeous), but for the sake of our daughter, I’ve made the choice to keep our identities semi-private. (This may come as no great surprise, but my name isn’t really ‘Allie’, and our egg donor’s name isn’t really ‘Marie’.) Because Marie and I both post about it on social media, it wouldn’t be too hard for mutual friends who don’t already know to make the connection. But while I don’t plan on volunteering additional identifying information to the world in general, it’s my hope that our story will help other people even if all of my Instagram photos feature giant emoticons plastered over our faces.

Every case is different

Would we have done things differently if we had used an anonymous donor? Or sperm/embryo donation? Maybe. Maybe not. One thing I’ve learned is that it’s difficult to say how you might handle a situation until you’ve really experienced it first-hand. And on top of that, every particular case really is different.

Since we made the conscious choice to be so open about our particular story from the beginning, we are running the risk that some people may indeed look at our daughter differently. I can’t control what those people may say to (or about) her in the future, and like any mother, that thought pains me. But I hope that whatever others may say, our daughter recognizes that her differences make her even more special. Because it’s ultimately a story about love, and how so many people came together just so that she can exist.

xx

* Marie actually volunteered to be our surrogate before she knew exactly what our fertility issues were. I explained that the oven was working just fine — I just didn’t have any dough.

** Like me, Marie is also excited to educate others and recently gave a presentation about egg donation at the high school where she teaches. Just imagine if she inspired even one student (or teacher) to donate eggs in the future!

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The genetics of my donor egg baby

~ femmephysicist ~ Leave a comment

Accepting that we had to use donor eggs during our IVF struggles was extremely difficult, to say the least. I’ve written previously about the grieving process that necessarily goes along with this ultimate admission of one’s infertility — how it feels like a part of you has died, and the post-traumatic stress that can accompany it. And even though I’m extremely grateful to modern science that there was still a way for me to get pregnant, fully accepting that you’re a genetic dead-end is a long, emotionally complex process which I’m still working my way through.

To give one example: when our egg donor, Marie, was here a year ago for her egg retrieval, she was explaining to her 5-year-old how she was helping put a baby in my belly. “One day you, too, will grow a baby in your belly!”, she explained to her daughter.

“Hang on a sec”, I wanted to interject — feeling compelled to add a caveat that it’s not necessarily a given so as not to set unrealistic expectations for the little girl. But then I realized that she was right — the odds are that Marie’s daughter will have no trouble conceiving a child naturally, should she eventually choose to. That then led me to an uncomfortable truth: I was jealous. Of a 5-year-old.

Why it still stings

Even though I’m now very happily 39(!) weeks pregnant thanks to one of Marie’s donated eggs, the lack of a genetic connection between me and our future child is something that I’m still coming to terms with. I think there are two main reasons for this.

The first reason has to do with my husband. We’ve been together over 15 years now, and he’s basically the best man I know. When you are in a (heterosexual) relationship like ours, it’s natural to dream of one day creating a family together — making a kid that is half you and half your partner. It’s like the ultimate expression of unity and an awesome science experiment at the same time. You never dream of creating a child with a third person, as lovely as that person may be.*

The second reason is a bit more selfish. I’m no Mozart or Giselle B, but most of the time I like to think that I’m sort of a cool person. This is also totally natural — everyday insecurities aside, I think most people are partial to their own genetics. It’s therefore become a running joke over the course of this pregnancy that whenever I’m feeling particularly pleased about some totally unimportant aspect of myself, like my exceedingly low blood pressure, or my yogic lung capacity, my husband and I will turn to each other with sorrowful eyes (mine serious, his teasing) and say “What a waste!”

Finding acceptance

Fully accepting the lack of a genetic connection with a donor egg baby is not something that happens overnight, and I think the most important thing is to allow yourself time. As I’ve experienced my own feelings about it evolve, I also wanted to share some thoughts that have helped me find acceptance.

The first and most obvious point is that genetics don’t make a family — love does. (This is also true for sperm donation, embryo donation, and adoption.) I’ve heard again and again from parents of non-traditional families that once you hold the baby in your arms, nothing else matters. You certainly won’t love the kid any less. From the very beginning of this journey — when we first made the leap to egg donation — this thought has comforted me.

Then there is the whole nature-vs-nurture point, where there is increasing evidence that nurture plays a huge role in many aspects of development. For egg donor babies carried in the prospective mother’s own uterus, the latest research in the exciting field of epigenetics even suggests that these environmental effects start in the womb. This means that although the baby’s basic genetic blueprint didn’t come from me, my diet, lifestyle habits, and even genes (via MicroRNAs) do influence which traits in the baby actually ‘turn on’.**

(Yes, I know I just got done saying that genes don’t matter, but this is still pretty cool.)

Another thing that has helped me is something I’ve mentioned before in the context of deciding to use donor eggs in the first place. In particular, I used to worry that I would get sad if our baby looked just like Marie (as beautiful as she is) because it would remind me that we weren’t actually related. However, my husband (smart man) made me realize that I needed to change my perspective. Instead of seeing the lack of a physical resemblance as a painful reminder of my infertility, I should instead see it as a reminder of the amazing gift we’ve been given. This slight change in perspective has helped me immensely.

Last but not least, finding the humor in the situation never fails to help. Just as I sometimes feel particularly pleased about some aspect of myself, there are other traits that I’m decidedly less enthusiastic about, like my terrible eyesight, or my somewhat unfortunate tendency to occasionally drool on myself in broad daylight. Whenever one of these unpleasant traits come up, my husband and I will turn to each other, half smiles on our faces, and say “Thank goodness those genes aren’t being passed on!”

xx

* And luckily for us, Marie is extremely lovely, both inside and out.

** So, unfortunately, that drooling gene may not be quite out of the picture yet.

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Should I use a known or anonymous egg donor?

~ femmephysicist ~ Leave a comment

For those brave infertiles who have gone through the necessary grieving process and decided to make the leap to egg donation, choosing between known and anonymous donation is usually the next big decision that needs to be made. I’ll say up front that in our case, the decision was essentially made for us. This is because we were told that an anonymous egg bank wasn’t really a thing in the Netherlands, and we found out that while our Dutch insurance still covered us in Belgium, we weren’t allowed to use the egg bank that does exist there. This was crushing, to say the least.

There were a few reasons we had hoped to at least have the option of anonymous donation. For one thing, I was mildly concerned that if the kid turned out to look exactly like someone we knew, this would be a constant painful reminder of my infertility (as well as fuel for gossip among those who didn’t already know). There was also the concern that it would negatively affect our relationship with the donor. Would I be jealous of their genetic connection? Would they become overly attached to the child? What if they, or their family, became overly involved?

But the biggest reason we initially hoped to use an anonymous donor was that we didn’t think a known donor was even an option for us. Nobody we knew had offered to donate, and it seemed WAY too big a thing to ask (“How has the weather there been? Would you mind having surgery to give us your genes?”) Very few of our friends met the criteria set out by the clinic, and we doubted that those that did would be willing or able to put their lives on hold to fly to Europe, where we had recently relocated from the US.

Taking all of these factors into consideration, anonymous donation seemed like our best (and only) bet.

Will my egg donor baby look like me?

I was never very worried about finding a donor who looked like me, but this can be another benefit of anonymous donation for many women. In particular, some clinics will offer egg donor matching based on physical characteristics. If you aren’t lucky enough to have a sister or close relative who’s willing to donate, this can be the best way for your baby to have a chance of resembling you.

Just to play devil’s advocate for a minute, I actually had the opposite concern — that if the baby looked too much like me, people would be constantly commenting on the likeness. Wouldn’t comments like that be an unwelcome reminder that I have raisins for ovaries? Worse yet, since I’m such a stubborn advocate of infertility awareness, would I feel the need to launch into a diatribe at every innocent ‘She has your eyes’ remark? I could see that getting annoying (for both them and me) real quick.

Benefits of known donation

While my husband and I were initially planning on using an anonymous donor, we could also see the possible benefits of known donation. For one thing, the kid would never have to wonder where they came from, because the donor would already be in our lives (assuming they were happy to be identified). Even with an anonymous donor, the increasing popularity of DNA testing from companies like 23andMe or Ancestry.com means they may not be anonymous forever. What if the child wanted to reach out to learn more about their heritage, and they were rejected?

Another potential benefit of known donation is that you have more information about the donor. If you’re worried about the child inheriting specific qualities, knowing the donor may give you peace of mind. (Although I think any woman who donates eggs has a heart of gold, which is arguably the most important quality.)

Our experience with known donation

In the end, our hopes of using an anonymous donor were dashed when we learned that a known donor was our only option — at least if we wanted to have the procedure partially covered by our insurance. Fortunately, we were extremely lucky that my childhood friend, Marie, volunteered. Marie and I actually share quite a few characteristics (physical and otherwise), which is just icing on the cake. We were even luckier that we managed to work out the ridiculously difficult logistics that accompanied a donor traveling from overseas. (This was, in no small part, thanks to the help of our awesome Belgian egg donation nurse.)

There’s no doubt that if an anonymous egg bank had been available to us, I’d be singing the praises of anonymous donation. Since known donation was our only option without breaking the bank, I’m so grateful to be here singing Marie’s praises instead. When all was said and done, I think the emotional support we felt from Marie’s offer was probably the biggest advantage of having a known donor. And as my husband wisely pointed out, if our kid turns out looking exactly like a miniature Marie-clone, it will be a beautiful reminder that someone in our lives cared enough to literally give us a child.

xx

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How we made the decision to use donor eggs

~ femmephysicist ~ 1 Comment

Now that I’m nearly 27 weeks pregnant(!), I’ve gotten a few private messages lately from women in the infertility trenches asking me things like how we made the decision to use donor eggs, how we decided between anonymous and known donation, and how the process compared to non-donor-egg IVF. I actually love getting these questions, because if I can help other people by sharing our experience, it honestly makes it all worth it. (Well… almost worth it… I’m no masochist.)

So for those who are currently considering donor eggs themselves, or those who are just curious, I thought I’d write a series of posts attempting to answer these questions. I’ll start by sharing how the decision process went for our particular case, with the acknowledgement that each case is different, and therefore our case may not mirror yours.

How did we make the leap to donor eggs?

I’m one of those people who researches the hell out of everything, so as soon as we learned that I had premature ovarian failure, I basically already knew that we would end up using donor eggs. To be clear, our OB-GYN here in Holland didn’t actually use the phrase ‘premature ovarian failure’… However, she told us that I had the hormone levels of a menopausal woman despite being 34 at the time, and then once we confirmed how my ovaries were responding to IVF (i.e., they weren’t), I put two-and-two together.

Of course, we still tried my eggs three times, which took quite a bit of effort — we had to talk the infertility clinic we’d been referred to into even doing a second IVF attempt after only getting a single egg the first time. This may be surprising to some people (‘Isn’t helping people get pregnant sort of the whole point of infertility clinics…?’), but the way they explained it is that with such a poor response, the risks of IVF start to outweigh any potential benefits.

That second attempt, we got three (poor-quality) eggs and transferred two — neither of which stuck.

Then we had to switch clinics (and countries) to get to a third try. The new clinic had me on different medication (both for the hormone therapy and for sub-clinical hypo-thyroidism), and I had also drastically altered my diet, so I was kind of hopeful that we’d get a better outcome. With that said, we went into it knowing it was likely our last shot, and the clinic suggested that we do a 5-day embryo transfer instead of 3-day like my other attempts, with part of the reasoning being that this might help us get ‘closure’. Indeed, when the single egg that fertilized (of a measly two retrieved) didn’t even survive to transfer day, that did help us close that chapter.

Was that an easy decision?

No — obviously that was still devastating. Just like normal, fertile people (lucky bastards…) can’t truly understand what it’s like to go through infertility/IVF, I think that those doing ‘regular’ (non-donor-egg) IVF can’t understand what it’s like to ‘give up’ on your eggs. (The same holds for the use of donor sperm, donor embryos, surrogacy, and etc.) For my husband and I, making the leap to donor eggs was a far bigger leap than ‘just’ doing IVF in the first place.

If undergoing ‘regular’ IVF was the equivalent of a Bachelor’s degree, accepting that we needed donor egg IVF was the equivalent of writing a doctoral dissertation.

With that said, I knew that I just really wanted to experience being pregnant, and if it took donor eggs to get me there, I was willing to make that leap. Luckily, my husband felt the same way.

Considering the whole spectrum of cases, I can imagine that making the decision to use donor eggs or not would be harder for those whose ovaries aren’t as geriatric as mine apparently are. When you’re only getting a tiny handful for poor-quality eggs each cycle, like we did, the decision basically makes itself for you. If you’re getting a larger number of eggs, or the reason behind the failed implantation is less obvious, the decision is much less clear-cut, of course. If this applies to you, then my advice would be to talk to your clinic and decide ahead-of-time if a non-donor-egg cycle will be your last one. That way, you can grieve appropriately during the cycle.

How are we feeling about it all now?

So now that we are finally pregnant through donor egg IVF (i.e. DEIVF), how are we feeling about our decision? The short answer is that we feel super excited and ridiculously grateful. Before it worked for us, I used to worry that any eventual DE pregnancy would be bitter-sweet, with each exciting milestone marked by an equal amount of grief for the lost opportunities. (I’m clearly not at all dramatic/prone to melancholy.)

Now that we have made it to the other side and things appear to be going well, I’m happy to report that I am just thrilled to be pregnant, and I don’t even care that it took donor eggs to get us here. Obviously, it being a donor egg pregnancy does raise unique issues — which I will continue to explore in this blog — but the important thing is that my husband and I are 100% happy with our decision. If anything, it just makes us both even prouder of what we’ve endured to get here.

xx

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The contents of my uterus

~ femmephysicist ~ Leave a comment

You know those people who talk about the baby like it’s a person before it’s even born? As in, ‘Bradley just loves when I eat ice cream’. Or, ‘Bradley’s nursery will be complete as soon as I hand-stencil the Desiderata on the wall’?

Well I’ve always found this behavior sort of odd, which is part of the reason I didn’t want to tell anybody the name before the birth.

That’s right — we have a name. Some people are surprised we have one ‘already’, but they really shouldn’t be. We’ve had YEARS to figure this out, guys. And actually, we had the name before we even started trying, and well before all this infertility nonsense started. My husband and I both distinctly recall discussing the name as a given already 10(!) years ago*, which means we’ve had it for at least that long.

The only thing we weren’t sure of was whether the gender would fit, because for some reason, we only had a female name. But at our 20-week scan we found out that it will…because, as luck would have it, it’s a girl.

To tell or not tell?

Everyone keeps asking if we were hoping for a girl or boy, and honestly — after years of infertility, failed IVF attempts, and ultimately egg donation — we’re still just over-the-moon that we’re pregnant at all. Our main excitement over learning it was a girl was realizing that we could finally use the name we’ve talked about for so long.**

My husband was so excited he wanted to immediately tell everyone the name, whereas I wasn’t even sure about revealing the gender at first. I admit the initial excitement almost swayed me. But in addition to finding it weird when people refer to an unborn child by a name, I’m also suddenly feeling a little…private?…about it all.

Saying that may seem at odds with the fact that I’m doing so on a public blog — raise your hand if you’ve heard me talk about my uterine lining! — but it’s actually pretty logical. I still believe strongly in raising awareness about infertility and egg donation, but that doesn’t mean I’m not a naturally private person. Infertility steals so much from you — my husband and I couldn’t conceive without getting literally dozens of people involved — and now that we are finally pregnant, I’d like to keep something back for just the two of us.

It’s an…it

In the meantime, my husband and I continue to refer to the baby not by name, or even by gendered pronoun, but as an ‘it’ — including in private. Maybe this will change as the pregnancy progresses further, but for now we’d like to ask our friends and family to do the same.

In addition to my newfound (& somewhat surprising) desire to keep the contents of my uterus private, I think part of it, for me, is that it seems somehow presumptuous/overly familiar to refer so intimately to a person we’ve never met. Another part of it may have to do with the fact that it’s a girl, and I’d like to delay society’s expectations (why is everything so PINK?!) for as long as possible. But I’m also no dummy, and it’s likely that a major part of it has to do with the trauma we went through to get here, and a natural tendency to shield oneself in the event of a loss.

So until this baby makes its grand debut, we will continue to refer to it as an ‘it’, and we hope you won’t mind following along.

xx

*We know this conversation took place exactly 10 years ago because we were trying to adopt a deaf corgi with the same name after we’d already decided we liked it for a kid. When that adoption fell through (and we wound up with our current neurotic fluff-ball instead), the silver lining was knowing we wouldn’t have to choose between finding a new kid’s name, or naming a kid after our dog.

**Ironically, the name we chose over a decade ago on the US is quite popular here in Holland. I can’t say I’m not a little disappointed, but least it will be easy for people here to pronounce…

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